Every Christian is called to the perfection of love. Religious life is a special call to a radical and intense life of evangelical counsels to become a visible sign of the fullness of life already started here on earth. For this God has called us to the Little Flower Congregation, an evangelical community of religious priests
Name of the Congregation
The name of our religious community is Little Flower Congregation. The short form shall be C.S.T., following the Latin name Congregatio Sanctae Theresiae A Jesu Infante.
Our Charism
The charism of our Congregation is derived from the beatitude of "Littleness" of the poor in spirit (Mt. 5:3) taught by our Lord who emptied himself taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2:5). Our Heavenly Patroness experienced God of the Bible as one who has preferential love for "the lowly" (Wis. 6: 7) and "the little" (Prov. 9: 4). The words of Jesus inviting the little children as revealing the mystery of the kingdom of God (Mt.18:1-4) fascinated her. The little children represented the lowly, the helpless, the insignificant, the downtrodden and the marginalized (Lk.14: 21). Little Flower practised and taught this littleness through her life of absolute surrender to God. This enabled her to find God as a loving Father and to approach Him with the simplicity of a child. The dynamism of this childlike approach was her love, trust and absolute surrender to God.
The total emptying of self permeated by love leads us to the foot of the Cross. Little Flower realized that her vocation is love in the heart of the Church and it is this love that motivated her actions and carried her missionary ambitions even to the ends of the earth. Our Father Founder who experienced this love and the "Littleness" of the Saint bequeathed to us a patrimony of a life of prayer, absolute surrender to God the loving Father and selfless service to the poor.
Our charism is realised by the practice of the evangelical counsels through the profession of the public vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, which are gifts handed over to the Church by Christ. Our religious community is constituted in this perspective and finds its place in the heart of the Church to witness to a Trinitarian life of love and communion through daily celebration of the Holy Qurbana and the contemplative study of the word of God.
Our Charism is actualized in the promotion of the values of the Kingdom such as truth, justice, equity, love, freedom and peace through the empowerment of the marginalized in the society especially of women, youth and children by pastoral and missionary activities, educational and rural developmental activities and proclamation of the good news to the poor ( Lk.4: 18-19). Hence, the call to our community is a call to prophetic mission in the world. Our charism in short is "Be little; serve the little". This means imbibing the attitude of the child like simplicity, love, trust and absolute surrender to God in the context of Gospel teaching and Theresian spirituality.
We are also called to preserve and promote the East Syrian tradition of St. Thomas Christians; moreover our life is to be enriched by the spirit and practice of the Oriental and Indian spirituality that teach us to seek God in the cave of our hearts and in the poor around us.
St.Joseph's Province - C S T Fathers - Little Flower Congregation
